614 



SCIENCE 



[N". S. Vol. XXXII. No. 827 



effects surpassing those supplied by nature, 

 they are also in many eases less affected by 

 time and light. 



Nor is this aU, for from this offensive pot 

 of tar — onee a troublesome by-product in 

 the manufacture of coke and gas — not only 

 are the fabrics which we wear and the 

 decorations of our homes made more at- 

 tractive to us in color, but from the same 

 source there are produced to-day the deli- 

 cate fragrance of the rose and the violet, 

 as well as the most popular of our flavoring 

 extracts. In the reproductive arts, in pho- 

 tography, in the preservation of foodstuffs, 

 and even in medicine the results have been 

 quite as startling and wonderful. The 

 scientific discovery that has made all of this 

 possible attracted little attention at the 

 time, and doubtless would never have be- 

 come generally known had it not been for 

 the generous financial support accorded 

 Perkin by his father in putting his results 

 upon a commercial basis. However, its 

 great economic and industrial importance 

 can now be realized when we are told that 

 from one of the 2,000 dyestuffs now manu- 

 factured because of it, there has been in a 

 single year a saving to the industrial world 

 of as much as $20,000,000 — a sum approxi- 

 mately equal to the endowment of the uni- 

 versities of Harvard or Columbia, and 

 nearly three times that of Yale or Cornell. 

 This wide range of applications could not 

 have been anticipated, but so important 

 and valuable have these products become 

 commercially that by-product ovens re- 

 cently introduced in the manufacture of 

 coke and gas have made the former by- 

 products the principal sources of revenue. 



No less remarkable in their contributions 

 to the permanent good of mankind and no 

 less brilliant as scientific investigations are 

 the famous researches and discoveries of 

 Pasteur. The work which has made his 

 name a familiar one in every country and 



at every fireside in the civilized world, was 

 not a scientific accident, but the culmina- 

 tion of a lifetime spent in research which 

 had already yielded results of the highest 

 scientific and industrial importance. His 

 revelation of the existence of bacterial or- 

 ganisms in the world about us and his dem- 

 onstration of the relation of these micro- 

 scopic organisms to the process of fermen- 

 tation and putrefaction, had enabled Lister 

 years before, in fact even before investiga- 

 tion had shown the causative agency of bac- 

 teria to disease, to make one of the first and 

 most important applications of bacteriol- 

 ogy to the prevention of disease by the 

 introduction of antiseptic surgery, a result 

 which has enabled the medical profession 

 to save the lives of countless thousands. 



Koch received his early training and in- 

 spiration from the investigations carried 

 on under the direction of Professor Cohn 

 in his botanical laboratory at Breslau, and 

 his subsequent researches upon the cholera 

 germ, at the Berlin Institute and his even 

 more important work that resulted in the 

 discovery of the causative bacillus of tu- 

 berculosis and the development of tubercu- 

 lin are too well known to you and their 

 importance in preventing the spread of 

 these dread diseases is too well appreciated 

 to call for further comment. 



The investigations of Metchnikoff, the 

 distinguished Russian zoologist and embry- 

 ologist, certainly place him among those 

 who have accomplished most in the bearing 

 of the biological sciences upon the preven- 

 tion of infectious diseases. For eighteen 

 years after graduation he was for the most 

 part engaged in embryological and zoolog- 

 ical investigation and discovered many im- 

 portant facts now commonly known to sci- 

 entists in those fields. In these researches 

 he came in contact with the wonderful 

 activity and efficiency of the white cor- 

 puscles of the blood in combating disease 



